Wasteland 2 - Early Impression @ RPS

Whatever ‘Early Access’ really means, the game’s just not yet ready to play comfortably, and in order to save myself from stropping off and giving up on it, I keep telling myself that despite the confident ‘beta’ tag this is just an alpha and I really should come back in a few months rather than try and invest anything in it now. Indeed, apparently savegames will likely be incompatible with the next update, so it really is sheer folly to try and do much at present.

So for now I’m treating it as brief proof that inXile do indeed appear to be making the game they’d promised to make, that it isn’t cheap and nasty and that it doesn’t suffer from the disappointing perfunctoriness of Shadowrun Returns. I think it’s going to pan out how we’d hoped, presuming ‘old school turn-based RPG with a big old lick of paint’ is what we’d hoped for. I’m afraid I do have to recommend against buying it right now though, at least if your primary purpose for doing so is entertainment.

Despite all the (probably more or less justified) griping the preview reads positive to me. All the important bits that Inxile promised to deliver seem to be in.

i.e.

In fact, it’s surprisingly… peppy and quietly flashy in many respects. It doesn’t jabber on for too long, it’s quick to offer flexibility, fights feel fairly fast and hard-hitting despite the staccato turn-taking, the camera’s fully-adjustable and the environments are jolly nice, pulling off a fine mix of arid wasteland and detail-packed clutter of post-nuclear civilisation.

Wasteland 2 also requires some creative thinking on occasion – saving a drowning boy, for example, involves realising that a certain skill might affect a certain object. If you don’t establish that quickly enough, or none of your party members have that skill, they will literally watch the boy drown, and the game and relevant NPCs will then reflect that outcome. Clearly I can’t say how much of that sort of thing will abound in the finished game, but I like the idea that if you’re just not enough of a thinker, not enough of a hardbitten wilderness survivor, you’re going to experience very different turns of events to other players. The world also feels reasonably fat with places and people, things to do/kill and options to make an enemy out of almost anyone even at this early stage, which bodes well for the future.

Swen was right in that last D:OS video. People should only get these early versions if they can handle the fact that things may turn out to be quite broken on occasion.

That said these guys too have probably got a lot of work to do here. Seems this one may slip further too…

Originally Posted by MorrandirCurrently it's scheduled for February 28th.

That's D:OS, he was talking about WL2. Which WAS scheduled for a november release in the beginning of this year, but got delayed. If I would make a guess from playing a bit of the Beta, I would say it need at least a couple of months of polishing, so maybe a release in march-april. Maybe.

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
That's D:OS, he was talking about WL2. Which WAS scheduled for a november release in the beginning of this year, but got delayed. If I would make a guess from playing a bit of the Beta, I would say it need at least a couple of months of polishing, so maybe a release in march-april. Maybe.

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
That's D:OS, he was talking about WL2. Which WAS scheduled for a november release in the beginning of this year, but got delayed. If I would make a guess from playing a bit of the Beta, I would say it need at least a couple of months of polishing, so maybe a release in march-april. Maybe.

Absolutely. Played it for a couple of hours, felt like it was going in the right direction, stopped playing. There are some huge balance issues (I read through their forums alot so I'm not the only one who thinks so), mainly that awareness is a God stat and charisma a dump stat (I agree on the first one, not so much on charisma. Like in many party based game I'm fine with a "paladin" doing all the talking while the rest can safely dump charisma…).

The combat is good but some more tactical depth would be nice, still satisfying though. The writing is excellent, and the voice acting that's in it (I would have been fine with none) is way above average. I didn't experience any performance issues whatsoever, nor crashes, but I didn't play for that long either. Some people on the Inxile forums are complaining that it's to much Fallout and to little Wasteland. I'm a huge Fallout fan and never played the original Wasteland, so for me that's a pro, not a con.

The feeling I left the game with is that I do want to play ALOT more. When it's finished.

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
Some people on the Inxile forums are complaining that it's to much Fallout and to little Wasteland. I'm a huge Fallout fan and never played the original Wasteland, so for me that's a pro, not a con.

Ditto

(Although I have played a bit of wasteland on DosBox a few years ago and I may try out the one from the KS at some point)

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
Absolutely. Played it for a couple of hours, felt like it was going in the right direction, stopped playing. There are some huge balance issues (I read through their forums alot so I'm not the only one who thinks so), mainly that awareness is a God stat and charisma a dump stat (I agree on the first one, not so much on charisma. Like in many party based game I'm fine with a "paladin" doing all the talking while the rest can safely dump charisma…).

The combat is good but some more tactical depth would be nice, still satisfying though. The writing is excellent, and the voice acting that's in it (I would have been fine with none) is way above average. I didn't experience any performance issues whatsoever, nor crashes, but I didn't play for that long either. Some people on the Inxile forums are complaining that it's to much Fallout and to little Wasteland. I'm a huge Fallout fan and never played the original Wasteland, so for me that's a pro, not a con.

The feeling I left the game with is that I do want to play ALOT more. When it's finished.

to me that would be a huge con. I loved wasteland, but I had to force myself to finish Fallout 1 and abandoned Fallout 2 before finishing it.

Originally Posted by wolfing
to me that would be a huge con. I loved wasteland, but I had to force myself to finish Fallout 1 and abandoned Fallout 2 before finishing it.

Well, there are also Fallout fans who complain that it isn't Van Buren (The Fallout 3 that got cancelled). But…how can you not like Fallout? The lack of a party? (I do know you like tactical RPG's and this is the first time we have different opinions on a game so I'm a bit curious.)

Wasteland 2 is solid enough that it doesn't really matter to me, these kind of games are to few and to far between. I'd rate it my most anticipated game since DA:O. As long as they don't rush it I think it will sell good and get great reviews.

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
Well, there are also Fallout fans who complain that it isn't Van Buren (The Fallout 3 that got cancelled). But…how can you not like Fallout? The lack of a party? (I do know you like tactical RPG's and this is the first time we have different opinions on a game so I'm a bit curious.)

Wasteland 2 is solid enough that it doesn't really matter to me, these kind of games are to few and to far between. I'd rate it my most anticipated game since DA:O. As long as they don't rush it I think it will sell good and get great reviews.

Party based versus single character is definitely the main reason. I just don't care about single character games, but so many people here said Fallout 1&2 were the "best games ever!" that I had to check them out.

Originally Posted by wolfing
Party based versus single character is definitely the main reason. I just don't care about single character games, but so many people here said Fallout 1&2 were the "best games ever!" that I had to check them out.

Alright, I can relate to that. I prefer a party too. Have you tried Fallout:Tactics? One of my all time favourites, even though I really like FO1&2 I've replayed Fallout:Tactics more times.

I guess I'm kind of glad there's zero chance I'll pay (a criminal and ridiculous) $60 for early access to a community funded and incomplete indie game and will be waiting.

I do have high expectations, like what I've seen, and look forward to the final product.

I'm a little concerned about combat too since I don't see how you spice up simple melee and simple gun play all that much.

I'm somewhat looking forward to pillars of eternity (or whatever it's called now) since mixing magic, ranged, melee in fantasy is generally more involved and complicated, and a high quality return of the iso-party-based games of glorious RPG past is something that's been sorely lacking from PC gaming. Unfortunately an eternity seems to be when this game might finally become available.